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I found myself in a remote part of the airfield with my opponent Matt Neal, the tallest racing driver in the world. Blue smoke billowed from his front wheel arches as I dumped the clutch on mine and we surged towards the ball. In a game of chicken, someone had to have the brains to back off first.

The ball exploded with a mighty pop and we collided nose on nose. My bonnet crumpled and snapped up, headlights smashed and the grill embedded into the steel radiator. I was rocking in the seat with laughter and saw Matt hanging off his wheel, grinning at me through his windscreen.

‘Drivers, we only have three balls left; please try to preserve them.’

The carnage continued unabated. James May kept reversing into people by mistake. They would have monstrous accidents in his wake attempting to avoid him.

I chased Hammond as wingman when another player drove into his path, forcing him to stop. I jammed the brakes and skidded sideways to miss him just as Chilton, the spiky blond from Baywatch, tail-ended me. He flew over my rear wheel and landed alongside, all neatly captured on my rear-facing camera.

Shortly afterwards I was speeding across the middle of the pitch when another car reversed into my path, probably May, and speared into the driver’s side just behind the door. Bang went the rear window, and the rear wheel didn’t fare much better.

I was glad to see my Aygo stretchered off. Judging by the temperature gauge she’d been running without radiator fluid for the past ten minutes. I hopped into a spare that had been vacated by an absolute animal who had been riding the clutch. The left pedal was on the floor and the stench of burning clutch plates hung in the cabin.

A few goals were scored, usually by hoofing the ball over the top of the opposition, chasing around and banging it into the net.

At the end of the game, the tarmac was littered with broken glass, door handles, wing mirrors, bumpers and fluids. I kicked my crumpled door open to climb out. Matt Neal’s vehicle was comically pigeon-toed. The rest of the fleet were KIA or walking wounded. We’d completely ruined ten new cars and there were a few stiff necks.

I’d also formed an intimate knowledge of the Aygo. It was superbly agile and resilient. The gearbox was quick and easy and the ABS had patiently accepted all the abuse I hurled at it. Sweet runabout.

I also began to see cars in a new light when manufacturers started tinkering with the format. BMW brought an ordinary looking 330i to TG, which they claimed could learn the track and drive it by itself.

Over the years the Bavarian coneheads had pioneered slick automatic gearboxes, fly-by-wire throttle backed with traction control, servo-assisted brakes controlled by anti-locking software, and active power steering that hardened and softened as you steered. These became standard systems fitted to all BMWs and unbelievably could operate all the functions of the car without the need for a driver. All it needed was a tweak to the software …

Men in blue coats plugged computers with fat glowing cables into the car’s brain and asked me to drive three laps of Dunsfold, one slow, one fairly quick and one fast. The onboard GPS tracking system logged the lines I was using around the circuit along with the lateral G-forces, speeds and steering angles. After the initial laps, the BMW engineers told me I no longer needed to steer, change gear, accelerate or brake. The car would do it by itself.

From personal experience, I preferred doing the driving to leaving it to a robot with ideas above its station. For the most part safety features did what they were supposed to: make driving safer. But all machines are fallible. I climbed aboard the BM half expecting it to wrap its auto-tightening seat belts around my throat, bind my arms and legs, then accelerate into a tree. I asked the German engineers if they wanted me to start with a slow lap to test the system first.

‘No, we make normal speed for the first